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How Bronx Aerospace earns its top rating

I have described Bronx Aerospace High School as a place where you would not want to work. Several times. 1, 2. Yet it consistently earns one of the highest Progress Report grades from the Department of Education. Not only As, but very high As. One year, I seem to recall, it had the highest A in the City.

Elsewhere NYS reported on the massive number of papers scored exactly at 65. And as result, teachers are no longer allowed to “reread” papers that fall between 60 and 64. But there are other ways to manipulate test scores.

Among the most eye-opening cases is Bronx Health Sciences HS — which graduated 96.6 percent of its students in 2010 but managed to get only 3.4 percent of the class to the higher, college-ready standard.

Schools with the next largest gaps between their graduation rates and college-ready numbers were:

* Repertory Company HS for Theatre Arts in Midtown Manhattan, which graduated 85.7 percent of its kids but just 4.7 percent at the stricter standard.

* Bronx Aerospace HS, which graduated 88.6 percent of its students but only 8.6 percent at the college-ready level.

“I think what the state has to look at is where these kids started,” said Barbara Kirkweg, principal of Bronx Aerospace, where the majority of students arrive performing at low levels.

“If they’re going to use this measure in some way to paint schools, it can’t be with that broad brush without consideration of what was the preparation of these kids when they left middle school,” she added.